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Relatively Speaking, Wyndham's Theatre - theatre review

A slick revival of a cleverly constructed play that offers an unsettling picture of marital distress and tight-lipped Englishness, at times ripely amusing. Yet for all Alan Ayckbourn’s craft it strains credibility, and too many of the jokes are predictable

Relatively Speaking made Alan Ayckbourn famous in the late Sixties. It also gave a big boost to the career of the late Richard Briers. Here it's efficiently revived with a cast that includes Briers's co-star from The Good Life, Felicity Kendal, and Kara Tointon, once of EastEnders and Strictly Come Dancing but now an Ayckbourn devotee.

The play is a perky comedy of misunderstandings. Max Bennett’s awkward and aspirational Greg is struggling to make sense of his embryonic relationship with Tointon’s Ginny. When she sets off for what he understands to be a weekend with her parents in Buckinghamshire, he decides to follow.

But he ends up arriving before her, derailing Ginny’s true mission, which has nothing to do with her family. Her real plan is to split from her married lover, Philip (an expertly blustering Jonathan Coy). It turns out Philip nurses unfounded suspicions about his wife, Sheila, so he’s quick to latch on to the possibility, no matter how bizarre, that Greg is the object of her desire.

The play is cleverly constructed, and after a rather flat first 20 minutes the pace increases and Ayckbourn’s deftness becomes clear. The actors all find the right sort of tone, creating an air of tense bewilderment. This is possible thanks to a very English evasiveness — a reluctance to ask direct questions and an insistence on maintaining a façade of politeness when rude candour might be more productive.

Lindsay Posner’s revival delights in the blandness of suburban life, evoked by Peter McKintosh’s neat and deliberately shallow design. Bennett reveals an engaging comic side. Tointon gives a performance that’s poised even if a bit one-note. And while the decision to cast Kendal and Coy as a married couple isn’t ideal, both display sharp timing.

What’s missing is real charm. It’s not just that Relatively Speaking is dated — light years away from the cutting edge of theatre. It also lacks that touch of madness necessary for perfect farce. True, it offers an unsettling picture of marital distress and tight-lipped Englishness, at times ripely amusing. Yet for all Ayckbourn’s craft it strains credibility, and too many of the jokes are predictable.